


Wonder A While Longer

by pietromavximoff



Category: Harry Potter - Fandom, Marauders Era - Fandom, Wolfstar - Fandom, jily - Fandom, marauders - Fandom
Genre: F/M, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-09
Updated: 2015-10-09
Packaged: 2018-04-25 13:19:41
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,997
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4962094
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pietromavximoff/pseuds/pietromavximoff
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>James and Lily are paired up in potions to make Amortenia, but all they discover is each other's scent</p>
            </blockquote>





	Wonder A While Longer

‘Blimey, Evans, just get the ingredients.’ James watched as Lily spun around so fast her red hair whipped her in the face.  
‘You get the ingredients.’ She spoke through her teeth, refusing to look at him, her arms crossed. Amortenia, Slughorn had called the potion, and nearly the whole class had rolled their eyes when he told them what it did. But still, intrigued, everyone had rushed to find a partner until James and Lily were left, and Slughorn was more than happy to pair two of his top students together.  
James snorted. ‘Just cause you’re worried that I’ll make a better potion than you doesn’t mean – ’  
‘I am not worried you’ll make a better potion than me! Besides, we’re making a potion together – ’  
‘So what’s the problem then?’ James asked just as Sirius popped his head in between them.  
‘Ah, Re, how did we ever think they’d get through one lesson without fighting?’ He asked as he walked past them, Remus shaking his head in mock disappointment from his and Sirius’ table to the side. Sirius continued, dodging Snape with a glare, who had hurried to the front to get the best of each ingredient before rushing to the back of the room. ‘It’s not like we don’t love the unresolved tension between the two of you during late nights studying in the common room by the fire because you’re determined to outdo each other, or you –’ he turned to look at Lily pointedly – ‘cheering the loudest out of everyone watching Quidditch whenever James gets the snitch – ’  
‘Which is always.’ James supplied with a half grin as Sirius nodded fairly before continuing, turning away from Lily’s flushing cheeks and now shooting his best friend a meaningful look.  
‘And you, pretending like the letters L.E you dawdle into every single surface you can find don’t stand for – ’ Before he could finish, there was a loud crash, followed by Professor Slughorn muttering good-naturedly to a student that they wouldn’t have marks taken off if their potion contained broken glass, although he was writing down something with a disappointed look, saving a blushing James from retorting back.  
‘But alas,’ Sirius walked past Lily and James back to Remus, his hands full, ‘sometimes Moony and I do crave the quiet, content sort of atmosphere to work in that isn’t filled with you two shooting love arrows at each other disguised as daggers.’  
James raised an eyebrow, watching Lily’s eyes roll as she caved and made her way to the front to get their ingredients.  
‘Don’t get me started on you two.’ He said to Sirius and Remus as Mary Macdonald swore from behind him, her potion already smoking and smelling faintly of rotting leaves. Professor Slughorn hurried over to her as James continued.  
‘The meaning of the expression silent night goes out the window with you two, honestly, if I were asleep all those times you thought I was, I might be innocent for another couple more years.’ Before Sirius could answer or Remus could pretend not to have heard, an amused voice followed James’.  
‘You really have no grasp of the phrase come quietly, you know that, Pads?’ Lily was back, making her way around their table and laying out everything she had got for the potion in front of them , James watching her with a silent awe, grinning. She caught his eye and grinned back, and they both temporarily forgot their argument in favour of making fun of Sirius and Remus.

Soon, the dungeon was filled with the excited chatter of pairs looking into cauldrons with wide eyes, the hushed whispers of angry arguments over who accidentally knocked whose wand into the potion, and a general smattering of cursing from all tables. James and Lily, now deeply immersed in their textbooks, were silently at war with each other once again.  
‘No, it’s cause you can’t stand to admit you’re wrong.’ Lily murmured through a forced smile in response to James’ comment (‘you’re only ignoring me because you know I’m right’) as Slughorn passed them and tapped his watch warningly. Sure enough, a few minutes later he called to the class, ‘five minutes to go!’  
That seemed to snap the two of them into action, and, for the next few minutes, they worked seamlessly together, James ducking when Lily threw something into the cauldron and Lily sticking James’ wand behind his ear as he struggled to find a place for it on the table.

A few minutes later, James had straightened up, wild hair and black smudged across his face from the cauldron’s fire and Lily, wide-eyed and with dirty fingernails, stared along with him at the potion. It was an opaque liquid, with a mother-of-pearl sheen to it, spiralling steam drifting up to the ceiling.  
They gave each other a quick glace before leaning in over the potion, breathing in for a few seconds deeply. Then, they both drew back, defeated looks playing across their faces.  
‘I can’t smell a damn thing.’ James broke the silence finally.  
‘Impossible.’ Lily’s tone was full of confidence, but he knew she couldn’t either. ‘I’m completely sure we did it right.’  
James ran a hand through his hair, almost knocking his wand out from behind his ear. ‘Well obviously not.’  
They both looked around the room; most students were sitting back, exhausted, as their potions bubbled and hissed, black, tar-like substances boiling or runny orange droplets splashing their disappointed faces every few seconds. Not many had managed to perfect the potion. Snape was one of the few who had, skulking somewhere in the corner of the room, marvelling at his accomplishment. James looked sideways to see Sirius leaning over his and Remus’ cauldron, his eyes closed as he inhaled the scent. A warm smile spread across his face and James swore he heard something about chocolate slip out of his mouth before Slughorn got his attention.  
‘And what do we have here, Miss Evans, Mr Potter?’ He peered over their cauldron hopefully, smiling, before rocking back on the balls of his feet as he scribbled down excitedly on his parchment.  
‘Don’t bother, Professor, it’s not right.’ James said, sighing.  
Sirius and Remus looked over to them, interested.  
‘Oh?’ Slughorn looked between them and then back to the potion. ‘But, Merlin’s beard! It is perfect!’ He waved a hand in the air for emphasis, effectively splattering those behind him with ink from his extravagant quill.  
‘Can’t smell a thing.’ Lily shook her head. At this, Sirius and Remus exchanged glances and moved closer ever so causally.  
‘Ah, well, we’ve come to the end of class regardless.’ Slughorn sounded disappointed, scribbling on his parchment as he walked away.  
Lily let out a small scream, throwing her book down and leaning on the edges of the cauldron, well aware that the heat was making the underside of her forearms red. James tugged her hair away as it fell from behind her ear, nearly dipping into the potion, picking up his textbook with his other hand and reading the instructions one last time. A few seconds later, he groaned and set the book down.  
‘Lily, the potions prodigy and James, the son of the great hair potion inventor Fleamont – ’ Sirius started, jumping up to sit on the table opposite them as James glared at him. Sirius, ignoring this, went on, ‘who also has the middle name Fleamont – ’ he nodded solemnly at Frank Longbottom, who was cleaning up the table Sirius was sitting on and desperately trying not to laugh, ‘you two are what Slughorn’s wet dreams are made out of. You’re the potions dream team – ’  
‘Aside from us!’ Remus called from the other side of the room, pushing a cauldron into a cupboard and not even bothering to turn around. Sirius nodded in agreement. ‘We are excellent.’ He grinned before turning back to James and Lily, who were not amused. ‘It’s one potion, what’s it matter?’  
Lily made a noise of frustration and James shook his head.  
‘Washed up at sixteen. Shame, really.’ Sirius said, putting on a fleeting, nostalgic look before bouncing off the table and joining Remus.  
‘It’s got to be right, we didn’t do a thing different to the instructions!’ James burst out suddenly, frustrated beyond belief that all he could smell was Lily’s perfume that was overwhelming his senses every time he leant over to sniff the potion.  
‘Well, perhaps I could actually smell something if you didn’t use buckets of conditioner this morning.’ Lily retorted dryly, her eyes narrowed.  
James paused, then turned to look at her in incredulity. ‘You can’t talk, all I can smell is your bloody honey and vanilla perfume, it’s giving me an asthma attack.’  
‘Don’t try and blame me for you screwing up the potion.’ Lily crossed her arms.  
James saw Sirius and Remus pause, and then start packing up more slower than before.  
‘Oh, of course you’d blame me for stuffing up the bloody potion, because you can’t do anything wrong – ’  
Lily rolled her eyes. ‘You just can’t admit that I’m better than you at potions and you made a mistake! You read the instructions wrong or – ’  
‘You were the one adding most of the stuff in, you probably knocked something into it without even realizing – ’  
There was another minute of them arguing back and forth, while Sirius and Remus hid their grins, Sirius turning each page of his potions books agonisingly slowly to shut it and Remus becoming very invested in scrubbing a stain off the table, before the shouting stopped, and suddenly, Lily realized something that was very irrelevant but had been tugging at her since James said it.  
‘And I ran out of my perfume last week.’ She said to him as he had stopped to huff in annoyance, turning to start packing up, and, despite himself, James’ eyes flickered to hers.  
‘Hang on.’ He frowned slightly as he recalled earlier in the day, and she paused to look at him. ‘I didn’t have time to wash my hair this morning, Sirius was hogging the shower.’ They both looked up, and Sirius met their eyes as he turned page five hundred and twenty three with such deliberateness that Remus had to bite his tongue to stop from laughing.  
James and Lily looked back to each other in stunned silence, their eyes widening.  
‘Hang on – ’  
‘But – ’  
Another moment of silence, in which Sirius and Remus seemed to pack up alarmingly quickly.  
‘Bout time.’ Remus said to them as he and Sirius made their way out of the classroom, the last ones still there besides James and Lily, and the faint sound of hands slapping together in achievement made its way through their daze.  
Lily and James stared at each other for much too long a time; startled green eyes meeting the wide hazel ones, silently wondering the same thing.

Later, after they had packed up in a confused silence and headed to the common room, they would make eye contact across from the fire and look away hastily, both refusing to start a conversation about it because they were too scared of how it would end. Later, when Remus would nudge James and give him a knowing look, James would raise an eyebrow at him and mutter something about Remus smelling Sirius’ jumpers, and he’d shut up. Later, when Sirius would jump onto the armchair of the couch Lily was half asleep on and ask her in no more than a whisper if he should buy James that conditioner for Christmas, he glare was enough to make him change the subject to anything but James. And later, when everyone had gone up to bed and it was just James and Lily in the common room, eyelids heavy and faces warm from the fire, they’d mumble goodnights, stumbling over words as they made their way to their dormitories, both looking back to watch the other go, both too scared to wonder what would happen if they had stayed down there a while longer.

**Author's Note:**

> Credit to people on tumblr whom I got this idea from and everything else!! 
> 
> (http://wolfstartrash.tumblr.com/post/121594960646/propercy-alright-so-we-all-know-that-during-an)


End file.
